


pretty fly for a dead guy

by jefferoni (CrowleysGlasses)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Beetlejuice inspired, Crack, Ghosts, Jamilton - Freeform, Light Angst, M/M, Other, Thomas Jefferson Being an Asshole, Thomas is already dead, Violins, as part of the fanfic squad, done for amino, like it’s barely there, music plays a massive roll, no one dies don’t worry, theyre already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrowleysGlasses/pseuds/jefferoni
Summary: It has been a long minute since Thomas has experienced human interaction. And he means real, true interaction. He hasn’t had synergy in what could be a thousand years, but just as easily a day. The passage of time has slowed to snails creeping along grass, the meaning of the word lost to the shackles of an unloving master.Floorboards no longer creak under his step, doors need not exist as he drifts from room to room. While it could be midnight, or it could be mid-morning. His windows are long boarded up with wooden panels, oak if he’s not mistaken. If he is mistaken, it doesn’t matter in the slightest as there’s no soul around to correct him.—Or, Thomas is dead. Alexander moves into his house. Violins play a major part.
Relationships: (background), Alexander Hamilton/Thomas Jefferson, Maria Reynolds/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Minor or Background Relationship(s), kind of?? - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 75





	pretty fly for a dead guy

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for amino! I’m a part of the fanfic squad and this weeks prompt was “how come you’re the only one who can hear me?”   
> Of course I thought of a Ghost AU, wrote while watching Beetlejuice: The Musical the musical the musical.
> 
> “It appears I cannot wrote jamilton without killing off Martha first” Was the title of this google doc.

It has been a long minute since Thomas has experienced human interaction. And he means real, true interaction. He hasn’t had synergy in what could be a thousand years, but just as easily a day. The passage of time has slowed to snails creeping along grass, the meaning of the word lost to the shackles of an unloving master. 

Floorboards no longer creak under his step, doors need not exist as he drifts from room to room. While it could be midnight, or it could be mid-morning. His windows are long boarded up with wooden panels, oak if he’s not mistaken. If he is mistaken, it doesn’t matter in the slightest as there’s no soul around to correct him. 

A hazy beam of light streams dangerously close to his face, and he squints in the light. It’s a temptation, one he refuses to acknowledge or accept. He ponders over what the great outdoors is like now, now that… How much time has passed? It’s a question he finds himself stumbling over again and again. It feels almost pathetic, not quite knowing the date. He lives through a mist, a fog that streams across his eyes and shields - protects - him from the world outside his covered windows. 

It’s no simple task to cross the boundary line of his property. To do so… it’s impossible. It’s a force keeping him forever trapped in his house, a building feeling less and less like a home and more like a prison cell. Solitary confinement would be an easy comparison. Forever imprisoned in the dreary, damp halls of what once could be classed as a bustling family space. 

He uses one hand to brush the limp curls from his face as he glides from his dusty sitting room into a somehow dustier dining room. The other hand swipes over the table, creating a burst of breeze which blows the particles off the mahogany dining desk.

The wood was a grounding presence under his fingertips, a glorious reminder that he was in fact still there. The feeling turns sour shortly thereafter, ripe with melancholy, he was  _ still there. _ As he had been for so long.

He softly wishes to himself, praying to whatever divine spirit that shall listen, for things to change. His unfinished business must've been settled long ago, he wants to leave. He needs to escape.

_ Be careful what you wish for. _

Thomas isn't quite sure when the changes begin to occur. Try as he might, he just can't put his finger on it. Alas, the adjustments to his home are happening, and they're happening fast. 

Time moves differently when you never exit your home. Clocks tick in odd formulas, speeding up before decisively - devilishly - slowing down. Every movement can be as though your legs are clamped with a secure ball and chain, or as though you're first place in the Olympic sprint. At the moment, Thomas isn't certain which one it is. 

The initial change is the first he notices, as it's the most obvious. The boards across his windows come down, leaving them open with a constant breeze filling the house with a frosty chill. It gives him the opportunity of a lifetime (can it be classed as lifetime?) and he is  _ not  _ missing out. 

He distinctly recalls his garden being cared for, remembers fondly spending hours upon hours of his day out in the lawn, planting and snipping at flowers before his dearest wife coaxed him back indoors. It's been so long, and he hates to admit he doesn't commemorate her face. She's become more of a blur in his mind, as he knows she was there at some point. But her facial features have turned generic and unidentifiable in his brain. He knows she was real. Yet at the same time it doesn't feel that way. 

_ My glorious shrubs… _ is all he can think about in this gradually saddening moment. He leans delicately on the windowsill, white paint chipped and yellowed from enduring the elements without being cared to. He notes the entire external wall needs a serious paint job, the robin-egg blue he previously prided the outside being has been ruthlessly battered and attacked by weathering. He doesn’t know what colour to describe it as now. He juts his head through the glass-pain of his window and stares his grand home down with an intensive, judgmental eye. To think he’s been residing in this dump.

_ The second change takes a while longer than the first. _

Thomas is yet to leave the interior of his prison cell. With the courage he’s managed to work up, all he has managed is a stick of his head outdoors to examine the not-so-humble abode. 

* * *

Then it starts. 

Trucks. He’s heard them before, trunding down the street as if they have an important destination. As if they’re not delivering groceries. But now, their job seems tenfold more crucial. They’re parked on the streets by his rickety old fence, that at one point was painted… maroon? He can’t be sure, as it’s chipped and diluted in colour. What he does know is that the gate creaks as it opens, and  _ oh god they’re breaking in his front door! _

The wood splinters and splits down the middle, the sharp edge of an axe slicing through the door with ease. He gasps and races towards the door, screaming to stop. This is his home! They’re destroying it! How could they be destroying it!? They can’t hear him, must be the sound of wood breaking over him. “Stop! What the hell do you think you’re doing!” He shouts again, but this time, three men in high visibility vests storm past and into the house, straight through him. He watches chills race down them, and they shiver, looking around. He runs behind them on their heels, watching helplessly as they heave his furniture out the hole where a door once was. 

Their grubby mits graze his most prized possessions, including a large portrait hanging over the mantel in his main drawing room. It’s a painting of his dear Martha, she has a stern face, lips full - perhaps overdone, but artistic liberties right? - and her eyes are warm. The artist managed to capture the fire that licks in her pupils, the golden flecks that swim in her irises. He repeatedly yells at them to leave her alone, to at least leave him with the portrait. But then they do stop, they leave the valuable items behind, instead moving to drag his grimy loveseat out. The words, “he said leave things that look profitable,” meet his ears as he’s trying to convince a man to leave his violin alone. It’s perched like some magnificent bird on its pedestal, but this stranger's fingers pluck the strings delicately. Thomas is coming to realise these men can’t hear him at all, perhaps their deaf or blind or something. Or maybe they just can’t see him… the idea hits him like a brick wall, and he clutches his nose, feeling the impact. 

They groan, the sound coming deep from their chest with huffs with effort. “Just so he can make an extra buck off it.”

“It’s not our place to question his choices, it’s our job to take all the other shit he doesn’t want out. If you’re desperate for something from this couch take a book or somethin’.” The leader, (or so he appears, he seems to have the most power over them all,) commands his comrade with a wave of his wrist. And Thomas watches his hands come off his violin, feeling the strange compulsion to pick it up and play. He did so a few days ago after all, which would explain the lack of dust on it. 

Thomas gapes, dashing after a worker who is tracing the golden inscription of the spine of a red book. War and Peace, he identifies with a cold glare. Deciding not to fight the urge anymore, he saunters up and smacks the novel from his hands as he picks it from its place on the shelf. The worker yelps as if he were a dog whose tail has been stepped on. His eyes dart around in fear, and he sees no one. Of course he doesn’t, he stares straight through Thomas who takes the opportunity to stuff the book back into its spot. The terror fills him up, and the man scurries from the room, then out the house, much to the chagrin of his friends. 

The next few days pass numbly, with his furniture gone, the home feels emptier than ever. He sobbed for hours after they removed the armchairs in his main room by the large oval window, the ones he and Martha spent hours sitting by each other in peaceful silence. Even though light streams in now, he feels cold, like shivers shoot down his spine every moment of every day. In spite of it, time has a remote meaning now. He can tell when it’s day or night now. If that’s a good thing, he doesn’t know.

The final change seems to happen all at once. One moment he’s standing in his bedroom (minus the bed), poised with a violin and playing a sweet melody. The next, he’s thrown to the floor in surprise by a wave of sudden noise that drowns out his own. It’s music. Bad music. The singer speaks too fast, mumbling along to a thunderous beat and he hates it. In that moment he despises it. It’s worse than anything he’s ever experienced, and he’s dead.

He’s come to terms with his own fatality. Finally realises he’s dead and there’s nothing he can do. He glances down the stairwell he didn’t notice he had crept to and spies a young looking man, standing in the living room with the door wide open. A speaker sits on the mantel which is in full view, and it blasts the bad rap. He’s examining the portrait, running his hands down the brush strokes like he owns it. Then his fingers curl around the golden frame like he owns it and goes to take it off the wall.

_ “Leave that alone!” _

Thomas wants to shout. But he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know anything at this point. Instead, he watches carefully with a sorrowful expression as the painting is hooked off the wall and placed gently aside. He’ll rush down for it the second this man leaves. Because… he will leave right? The other men did. So he will too.

* * *

  
  


_ This man is insistent. _

He hasn’t left yet. Still dances around the sitting room and dining room as though he owns the place. It’s like he’s made an effort to brighten the place up by dragging a white lawn chair indoors and tossing a blue rug over the hardwood floors. Thomas has ignored him all day, watched him from the shadows that span along dark corridors. Or he had until a candle was lit in there, he was used to candles, but not ones that smelled so sublime. Nothing resembling coconut has ever been in his building until now. He stands by that candle a long while, breathing in the scent with vigor, trying to memorise it in his mind to recreate later. 

But now, he glances into what once was his sitting room, and sees the man asleep in his lawn chair. Thomas smirks, at long last some peace. No more will he skirt around him like the plague trying to go unseen. He assumes he has until sunrise to do as he pleases, dawn until this man awakes. So he does what any logical, undead being would.

He grasps the neck of his violin in his left hand and balances the body on his shoulder, resting his chin ever so slightly atop it. With his right, he holds the bow, and gently strokes it across the strings, a wave of relaxation washing over him as the notes flow to his eardrums. It’s as though he’s at the beach on a quiet, peaceful day. Where the water laps over you when you sit by it in a gentle way, a beckoning feeling that calls you to the deep. Whether you chose to follow it or not is your choice. 

Thomas plays. He plays until his wrist is sore most of the time, but now his wrist cannot get sore, so he plays until he has a reason to stop. He feels no reason. 

A bloodless harmony goes a long way to calm a mind, Thomas finds. Each flick of his wrist is an appeasing difference to the rest of his day. His eyes lower to the bow, watching it move with a soft smile as he loses himself to the music. So much so he hears not of the creaking stairs that he really should’ve gotten fixed before he died, and hears less of the door opening.  
  


* * *

Alexander has never been more happy to buy a home. It’s a fixer upper, but the neighbourhood surrounding is magnificent, and the house lies close to the edge of town. It’s close enough to work that he may catch a bus or walk if he leaves early enough and fuck him, it was cheap. The windows are boarded up when he arrives, the door doesn’t open and the paint on every part is peeling, but something about it is calling out to him. The people next door, a couple of women and their child have already spoken to him, offered him tea and cookies which he had gladly accepted.

They tell him myths, rumours of the home. “It’s haunted,” the shorter one, Eliza, tells him in a hushed tone. She darts her eyes to the outside wall, leaning back in her white folding chair and taking a long sip of lukewarm tea. “We hear things from it every night.”

“Like what?” Alexander asks with a half laugh. He doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see or touch, which includes anything supernatural or undead. He runs his fingertip around the rim of the chipped mug Eliza and Maria had given him, watching their son Philip run free around the yard. Dogs without horses, he thinks with a smile.

Maria buts in with an overtly loud slurp of tea. “Music, violins mostly.” She shivers, “ever since the boards on the windows came down we hear the music more often, it’s odd.” 

“Are you sure it’s not a different neighbour?” Alexander couldn’t help the snorting laugh that passes his lips at Maria’s superstition. “Whatever supernatural spirit you think is in there, isn’t there.” He said with a definite nod, chuckling to himself. While his other friends may believe in such frivolously untrue beings, he regards himself as above that. Superior in the way that he can separate fact from fiction. 

Eliza and Maria share a knowing glance, before they turn away from each other and take a coordinated sip of tea. Eliza smacks her lips after taking her drink, placing her now empty (spare a few droplets here and there) cup on the grass by her feet. “Whatever, you say, Alexander,” she says with a wide smile, and it causes a surge of happiness to fill him. Her beam is one of a mother, grinning at her child. It makes Alex feel safe, protected and he enjoys the feeling as it lasts.

“Well, ladies,” he breathes out as he stands, carefully handing his mug to Maria whose arm is outstretched, “I really must be going. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, thank you kindly for the tea and cookies.” He snatches the last one off the place Eliza had brought out, smiling as he nibbles on it and crumbs fall to the floor.

“Take care, Alexander.” Maria calls after him, and perhaps it’s the conversation they had before, but a sense that her words had a deeper meaning overtakes him as he steps out of their garden. He heads for his own home, that doesn’t feel much like home yet alas.

The door has been replaced, thank god. It’s peeling maroon paint replaced for a pristine black one with a shining knocker in the high center. He pushes the door open with his foot, having not bothered to lock it when Eliza and Maria had invited him over. Stepping inside, he kicks his shoes off into the corner. That’s when he hears it. 

The sickening sweet melody of a violin flows down the staircase and greets his ears with a smile. His stomach drops. The door clicks shut behind him, and he follows the mellow harmony down the hall, the floorboards groan under his step, which grows lighter as he hurries faster and faster towards the stairs. These creak louder as he leaps up them two at a time, the violin growing more boisterous the further and further up he climbs. 

_ And he’s terrified. _

Horrified beyond belief because Maria and Eliza are right, that is certainly classical music, certainly not the kind he would typically enjoy. However, the chords buzz pleasantly through his veins and he thinks that’s what scares him most. Because god be damned if Alexander is ever scared of people, of trying new things or learning more about the universe. If ghosts turn out to be real, then strike him down for being wrong. All he cares about is meeting, finding,  _ discovering _ , this mystery soul who exists within his walls. All insecurities about being proven false fade away as his feet hit the landing with a soft thud, hitting on the rug he had placed here. He’d placed rugs around the home in random places, trying to brighten up the glum walls until he could paint them. 

The music fades out, a pause as the musician takes a moment to rest before picking back up again. This time the melody is happier, a brisk, bright tune that takes Alexander back to his time in the West Indies. He imagines a younger version of himself chasing crabs down the white sands, and collecting shells along the sea-shore. The squawk of a buzzard overhead alerts him from his daydream, and he looks around for the bird. There is no bird. But there is a screech of a violin, followed by a soft, “fuck.” 

He sprints down the hall without a second thought. Tossing his hat into the ring before thinking about his act, putting on a performance of stubbornness and sheer force of will because let hell freeze over before Alexander Hamilton backs down from a challenge. 

Theres someone in his house. Someone with superb musical talent, sure. How or when they got there he never stops to ponder, his only worry is finding them and kicking them out. Or praising them for this instrumental, he hasn't quite decided yet.

Stopping with a skid, he hears the music pick up, louder. He presses his ear to the flimsy wood of what he believes to previously be a study. When scouring the place after buying, he had found rooms meticulously intact. To the point where he had explicitly asked the movers to keep the study and offices untouched, satisfied with exploring the areas alone. He had seen a violin downstairs at one point, but hadn’t considered ghosts when it vanished, always assuming there was more than one in the house. 

He wiggles the door handle and pulls the door open ferociously. He knocks the feeling of impending dread away as he kicks into the room. He freezes. 

_ There is someone in his house. _

The man turns around, and when Alexander’s sees his skeletal fingers he gasps. They’re faded and a low opacity blue in the shape of fingertips. His hands clutches a violin and bow, and he stands by a window with the curtains slightly drawn. “Oh for crying out loud, you’re still here?!” He says exasperated, dropping the violin to his side. 

“W-who are you?!” Alexander feels the colour rush out of his face, his mouth agape. All the confidence he was feeling before leaves his body as a ghost as the man glides across to him, looking just as afraid of Alexander as he is of the man.

_ “How come you’re the only one who can hear me?” _

The shock sounds in his tone, vibrating around the room.

“Who are you?!” Alexander repeats in a more desperate tone, slumped over in shock as though he may collapse at a seconds notice. “Why are you in my house?”

“Your house?” He scoffs and pats Alexander’s shoulder, his fingertips disappearing through the fabric of Alex’s sweater and sending shock waves down his spine. “Honey, why are you in MY house?”

“Y-you…” Alex backs away until he hits the wall, blinking rapidly. “You’re the man who died here?” He stares at the room before him. The curtains are tattered, ripped at the bottom, and honestly it looks like the oldest part of the room. That and the books. The books that are stacked all over the floor, piled in corners and packed into shelves. First editions the lot of them, he observes with a small chuckle. He watches intently as the man places his violin and bow down on the windowsill, gazes out with a fascination possed only by young children and turns back to face Alexander with a scowl. 

“Congrats, you figured it out. Would you care for a cookie?” He teases, melancholy ringing through his tone. He seems to swoop around when he moves, feet never properly touching the floor and Alexander finally lets his brain admit that he is talking to a fucking ghost.

He runs a hand through his hair, pulling it free from his ponytail. “And you’re still here..?”

“No,” he retorts snappily, “of course I am. Where else would I be? I live here. You wanna live here? You got me as a roommate. Don’t worry I won’t steal your toothpaste.” He sneers with disgust, licking his full lips with a half-hearted chuckle. “I’m Jefferson, but my friends call me Thomas. You can call me Jefferson.”

Alexander narrows his eyes. For a dead guy he has a lot of sass. “Alrighty then, Jefferson. Care to explain to me-“

“No. No I don’t care!” Thomas smiles in a sickeningly sweet way, all teeth and heat. The abundance of hatred in his voice, coiling it’s way around his words hits Alexander in the heart and he frowns deeper than he has in a long while. “This would be where you introduce yourself.”

“Alexander. Alexander Hamilton.” He gives a simple answer, after all, it’s a simple request. But his blood boils at the self righteous smirk he’s offered in response, and has already decided he despises this ghost  _ thing _ with his whole (alive) being. He watches Jefferson slink past him with a quick glance over his shoulder, yet somehow, even though he already knows he hates him, another unwanted shudder races through him. He leaves the study, and skates down the stairs, leaving Alexander alone upstairs. 

Heh,

_ Pretty fly for a dead guy. _

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments appreciated more than just a read! Leave feedback please, also sorry the ending is so rushed.


End file.
